Part I. ^ LITTLE TOUR IN THE ALPS. 91 



one. Perhaps its hardships make it none the less dear. Even 

 the procuring of the necessaries of Hfe renders them liable to 

 dangers of which in this country we have no experience ; almost 

 every commodity of life has to be dragged up these valleys 

 on the backs of men or mules from the villages and towns 

 in the Rhone valley ; while in their dwellings, made of stems 

 of the ever-abundant Pine, and usually placed on spots likely 

 to be free from danger from avalanches, they are sometimes 

 buried alive. 



The following description by Mr. Ruskin of one of their sad 

 little groups of houses is fearfully true, and as it is perhaps 

 desirable that we should know a little about the people as well 

 as the plants, it may not be out of place here : — 



" Here, it may well seem to him, if there be sometimes hard- 

 ship, there must be at least innocence and peace, and fellowship 

 of the human soul with nature. It is not so. The wild goats 

 that leap along those rocks have as much passion of joy in all 

 that fair work of God as the men that toil among them. Perhaps 

 more. Enter the street of one of those villages, and you will 

 find it foul with that gloomy foulness that is suffered only by 

 torpor, or by anguish of soul. Here it is torpor — not abso- 

 lute suffering — nor starvation or disease, but darkness of calm 

 enduring ; the spring known only as the time of the scythe, and 

 the autumn as the time of the sickle, and the sun only as a 

 ■warmth, the wind as a chill, and the mountains as a danger. 

 They do not understand so much as the name of beauty, or 

 of knowledge. They understand dimly that of virtue. Love, 

 patience, hospitality,- faith — these things they know. To glean 

 their meadows side by side, so happier ; to bear the burden up the 

 breathless mountain flank unmurmuringly ; to bid the stranger 

 drink from their vessel of milk ; to see at the foot of their low 

 deathbeds a pale figure upon a cross, dying also, patiently — in this 

 they are different from the cattle and from the stones, but in all 

 this unrewarded as far as concerns the present life. For them, 

 there is neither hope nor passion of spirit ; for them neither ad- 

 vance nor exultation. Black bread, rude roof, dark night, laborious 

 day, weary arm at sunset ; and life ebbs away. No books, no 

 thoughts, no attainments, no rest ; except only a little sitting in 

 the sun under the church wall, as the bells toll thin and far in the 

 mountain air ; a pattering of a few prayers not understood, by 

 the altar rails of the dimly gilded chapel, and so back to the 



